The earliest speaking machines were perceived as the heretical works of magicians
and thus as attempts to defy god. In the thirteenth century the philosopher Albertus
Magnus is said to have created a head that could talk, only to see if destroyed by
St. Thomas Aquinas, a former student of his, as an abomination. The English
scientist-monk Roger Bacon seems to have produced one as well. That fakes were
appearing in Europe in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries is shown
by Miguel de Cervantes's description of a head that spoke to Don Quixote -- with the
help of a tube that led to the floor below. Like Magnus, this fictitious inventor
also feared the judgement of religious authorities, though in his case he took
it upon himslef to destroy the heresy. By the eighteenth century science had started
to shed its connection to magic, and the problem of artificial speech was taken up by
inventors of a more mechanical bent."